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Walnut Catsup

A walnut-based catsup made with anchovies, salt, spices, and horseradish, boiled and aged for three months.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Walnut Catsup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the walnut juice

  1. Grind or pound the green walnuts and squeeze the juice through a coarse cloth.

Make the ketchup

  1. In a pot, combine the walnut juice with anchovies, salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper, ginger, cloves, mace, and horseradish.

  2. Boil the mixture until it reduces by half.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Bottle and age

  1. Bottle the catsup and use it after 3 months.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Clove + horseradishtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Walnut + horseradishtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Green walnuts
Provide the base juice that gives the ketchup its characteristic bitter, earthy flavor.
Anchovies
Add savory depth and a salty, umami richness that builds over time.
Coarse sea salt
Preserves the mixture and draws out flavor while curing it.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat that mellows during aging.
Horseradish root
Adds sharp pungency that fades somewhat as the ketchup matures.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture until it reduces by half. Reducing concentrates the salt, acid and spices, which helps preserve the ketchup and sets its intensity. Stopping early leaves it more perishable and less stable during aging.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, pepper, ginger, clove, horseradish):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, pepper, ginger, clove, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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